History of the Beef Cattle Industry in Illinois

by Frank Webster Farley

At that point began the advance in the value of land. The government had no more choice corn land. The two acres necessary to keep a cow during the summer and two more acres, the hay from which would keep her during the winter, doubled in price within the next fifteen years, but it did not increase in actual value as determined by the amount of grass or grain it would produce. It was at that time the people were confronted first with dear land, stockers, feeders, corn, hay, and beef. This all led the cattle feeders and the corn growers to begin studying out a method or system by which they could profitably grow corn to make beef instead of growing beef to market corn. The prices of fat cattle were very tempting, something unheard of ever before, but when it came to buying feeders, the margin was very little greater than it had been in previous years, and besides, corn was higher than it had ever been. The problem then was, how to get the most beef out of a bushel of corn.

Experiment stations had been doing work along that line for several years. They pointed out that the younger and smaller the animal is, the less will be the grain required to sustain the life-giving forces, or to run the machine, and a greater proportion will go to the building up of body tissue, hence the greater the profit in feeding young animals. Feeders began to drop out the two and three year old steers and replace them with baby beeves. Many feeders tried it but somehow or other they could not make it work according to the experimental evidence. They found no profit in feeding any kind of cattle. Many feed lots became empty and blue grass and clover pastures were plowed up and put into corn fields. If corn was worth more outside of the steer than it was in the steer, the farmer argued, why feed cattle? The landlord could get more rent from corn land than from grass land devoted to cattle grazing; therefore, he saw no profit in building expensive barns, sheds, and fences for cattle feeding.

In the summer of 1907, business was flourishing and packers were in need of money. To meet their needs, they flooded the western banks with commercial paper. They bought so few cattle that the price fell off at least 30 per cent in three months' time. The loss accrued by such a rapid decline in the price of fat cattle was so great that it paid for the commercial paper that had been issued by the packers. Such conditions as these hastened the process of depleting the feed yards and decreasing the number of cattle on the market.

"The cattle have left central Illinois and the grain elevator now distinguishes the landscape. The vast blue grass pastures of the ante-bellum period have disappeared, and corn tillage is the principal occupation of the agrarian population. Down in Morgan and Sangamon counties, even recollections of the cattle trade, as it existed in the days of John T. Alexander and Jacob Strawn, are being rapidly affected. A few cattle come in from the west to be fattened on corn, but summer grazing is the exception and the interest of the occupant of the land centers, not in the cattle market quotations, but in the price of corn.[6]

"All the evidence seems to point toward the conclusions that another change in the corn belt system of beef production is imminent.

"One of two things will happen or Illinois will quit the cattle business. Either some new breeding and rearing center must be developed, or Illinois feeders must return to breeding their own feeder steers.

"I believe that Illinois will not quit the cattle business. There is too much at stake besides the mere success or failure of the cattle business alone. First of all, this country needs the beef. The greatest people of the earth have been meat eaters, and I believe that the American people will continue to eat meat and will pay the price necessary to make its production profitable.

"Another consideration of vital importance, but too broad a subject for discussion in this connection, is the value of livestock as an aid to the maintenance of soil fertility. Then, too, for the sake of our economic stability, the livestock interest of the country must be preserved and encouraged. Professor Herbert W. Mumford is my authority for the statement that 80 % of the corn grown in the United States is fed to livestock. Picture, if you can, the effect upon corn belt land value and our economic situation generally if the country suddenly lost this market for 80 % of its corn crop.

"Regarding the possibility of another breeding center being developed, it may be said that there are other sections that can produce feeders much more cheaply than Illinois. There are large areas of cheap lands in some of the Gulf states with which Illinois could not compete in the production of feeder steers. But these sections are not interested in the production of cattle, and it is doubtful if the south ever produces a surplus of feeder steers. Hence, it seems that the probable solution of the whole question will be brought about by producing our own feeders.